Kenya Home Broadband Internet Comparisons.

Over the last few of years, Kenya’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have developed broadband offerings for the home market. This article is a objective comparison of the different offerings in the marketplace, and how they match up. More specifically, this comparison ONLY includes broadband bundles that have a flat rate monthly billing model:

This emerging market was first tapped into by Africa Online with their InfiNet product. InfiNet uses a wireless broadband technology that is quite different from WiMAX. InfiNet is comprised of the InfiNet Pro, InfiNet Classic and InfiNet Lite bundles:

AccessKenya has been focussed on the Corporate and SME market segments since inception. Therefore, having done some market research, AccessKenya established that there was a large and underserved market for broadband internet services in Kenya’s homes. Therefore, as a result, AccessKenya launched its wireless home offering, [email protected] The product is comprised of two bundles, premium and value:

Zuku is the the latest entrant into the home broadband market. Zuku, a product of Wananchi Online, offers bundles for the home, SOHO and SME markets. Zuku uses WIMAX wireless technology. For purposes of comparison, I only reviewed their ProSurf and SuperSurf bundles as below:

From all of the above, where price and value is concerned, it would appear that Zuku has the best broadband bundles all in all. However, Africa Online and Access Kenya have been renown over the years for giving guaranteed bandwidth and high quality services. Clearly, Africa Online is the most expensive comparatively. Orange Kenya seems to have a fairly competitive offering and is probably closest to Zuku. The only way to reach a truly conclusive comparison would be to test all of the above services concurrently to establish the best one(s) in terms of price, speed, customer service and value-added services.

The Author

Moses Kemibaro

Moses Kemibaro is the Founder of Dotsavvy, Kenya’s first Digital Business Agency which he established in 2002. He also currently serves as the Commercial Manager in East Africa for the Perform Group, the leading global digital sports media business that owns Goal.com, the world’s leading digital destination for football content with over 70 million users per month globally - and 2 million in Kenya.

Moses is a seasoned digital services professional having worked in Africa’s Internet Industry for over 15 years. In 2012 he was the Sales Director for Africa at InMobi, the world’s leading Independent mobile ad network where he led sales in Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana. Between 2010 and 2012, Moses was the Founding Regional Manager at Dealfish East Africa (now known as OLX Kenya) which he grew from scratch to become the leading online classifieds on mobile and desktop in Kenya and Uganda.

Previously, Moses worked at companies such as 3mice Interactive Media and Africa Online at the very start of Kenya’s digital revolution. Moses is also an award-winning and often quoted TechBlogger at MosesKemibaro.com where he rants and raves about all things digital in Kenya and Africa.

77 Comments

[email protected] – I paid 8500 for installation cost. Equipment (25k) is on offer after a year. And there is a removal cost as well if you are not satisfied with services povided. Waiting list is long, make sure to get a date when you sign the contract. Currently, I am not really satisfied – Getting much less than guaranteed a far as I know… And so many timed out !!! Helpdesk is indeed 24h/24h and helpful but lines are bad (IP telephone), but there is no ticket system, no impossible for you to follow or keep record of problems. Hope this help. Peperuka

hi, thanks for this overview. can you give some more backgrounds on setup/waiting time and runtime for contracts? i’d also be very intersted in some thoughts on safaricom’s offering. whats their guaranteed bandwith? Ã®n which areas are they offering 3g? do they give you another SIM card for using your fon at th same time or do you have to use it for both, the modem and fon? are there other providers for 3g? what’s in your pinion the pro’s and con’s for a 3g based offering? thanks fo getting into it… mike

Im on the zuku prosurf package and it is extremely frustrating. Since we had the service installed in october last year, the internet connection has not been able 2 maintain for longer than two weeks. Furthermore, download speeds peak at 28kbps, and if your lucky, 32k. The zuku customer service is not the best either, and when I complained to them about the speeds, they told me the connection is shared! Dont get lured by the low prices, zuku is useless!

what about the Zain modem? How does it perform and what is the cost? I have a safcom one. I bought it at 10K but I have found it inconvenient for me because I am a heavy internet user and with Safcom you pay per MB. Every MB is 8/-. I would be willing to exchange it with anyone who is a light user(reading and replying to mails for instance). I need one with a flat rate-payable at the end of the month.

According to my knowledge and experience, ORANGE TELCOM is USELESS. Their customer service is POOR. The only change that has come from the company is the name ORANGE, but the service has always been POOR.

AfricaOnline was the first on my list and had been using that for over 2 years. I was on the INFINET package. The speeds are great, and I am a heavy user. Due to this factor I changed over to Wananchi Wolburst, which was the same, however the download was not restricted.

At work I use Access Kenya and to be honest, so far their internet speeds are great.

At the moment I am interested in the fastest broadband service available in the market. This question is never answered correctly and the answers are never correct. According to a survey that I have done, ZUKU shows to be the fastest, but then again their connections are not stable.

Talking of Stability, Access @ Home has the answer.

As for the 3G networks, I have never bothered with them as their speeds also vary.

When are we getting the FIBRE OPTIC CABLE put in place? I am sure that we shall be hitting 3MB links once that has been connected.

Savani – Not all the time shall 3G give what is promised, there are many parameters that come to play. Key on that is the fact that GSM infrastructure priority is Voice when the network is congested. All the best.

I’m using Access Kenya and the connection is reliable, but still have an issue with speed. Hopefully we should experience faster connection by September. It will be interesting to see what the speed/price will be also if they introduce download limits.

Am a satisfied customer of Orange, Broadband Turbo. And I have to say these days the system is stable and fast. But I don’t know whether the fact I live & work upcountry (few internet users) has to do with it?

My friend is on Safcom 3G, the service started well but this days attaching 1gb file is a pain in the a***

I haven’t tried the others but from the above comments all companies are guilty of over promising and under delivering.

If you need to use FTP services for transferring files from your PC to your web-server, then do not go for Wananchi (Zuku) services as they seem to have blocked the ports. I have been using their internet service but for some reason their support staff do not know what FTP is or how to re-configure their servers to enable this service. Their server actually blocks the FTP connections. Useless!

I have been using Safaricom’s 3G broadband for a year now. judging from from everyones experience on the other ISPs, Safaricom’s a lot better. The highest download speed I clocked was 1.9 Mb/s though theoretically they say the peak’s 7.0 Mb/s. For their prepaid services, a bundle of 1GB goes for 2500ksh. Network coverage is great covering almost major towns now including Kitale where i am nw.

Like Adam said go to speedtest.net. tests your speed hapo. during the day, if yo get 10% of what they offered you are doing well. the true speed comes on between 12 and 6am. (ma downloaders know)when they say 256,512 etc its like when a manamba tells you hii ni gari ya saa sita.. though its 3pm. 256 etc is a name for what they will flog to you. Anyway acces seems to be the most reliable. Another good way is to ask them for referee in your area and call them up.. some perfom better in different areas.

I have been using the Zain dial-up modem for the past 1 year and all I can say is that the service is somewhere between fair & poor.

I pay 3K per month for unlimited internet, though don’t expect it to go above 20KB/s. Ever! Not even at 3 a.m on Sunday. The only advantage Zain has is being mobile for a fair price. It’s the sort of modem you can give your laptop carrying friend for a few hours.

However if zain suspects that you’ve been downloading alot (over 200MB in a session), they will terminate the connection for you. This is bad news for overnight downloading. Luckily, I came up with a workaround that will reconnect in 30 seconds even when U R asleep. You can have up to 500 MB in a night. If you have a deep wallet though, go for Safaricom broadband

just do not think about zain,you will be disappointed plus even after you quit using the services they still continue charging you.Very poor customer service especially if you try to visit there office on koinange street.the service is too slow and keeps on being disconnected.how is zuku?

I have used Safaricom for three years but when I recently joined an online course could not open and run Blackboard of the school. Joined Access Home but they certainly promise more than they deliver. Extremely slow, especially in the day. How is the new Orange Nyumbani – anybody tried it with the new low rates?

I have use Zain, Safaricom, Orange and Access Kenya offerings. I rate safaricom and access kenya below the other two because they only give ‘shipped’ content; i.e. they only give proxied content and as such many services such as FTP, VOIP or active websites dont work. These services work for Zain and Orange. Only problem is that Zain is slow, service-wise they offer what they say. Orange suffers from customer care weaknesses and ambiguity of packages offered. For example, those of us already on livebox can not migrate to Nyumbani offering. We will have to reregister and again go through another corruption prone process yet to be determined. All in all, Orange is the only provider actually offering ‘broadband internet’ access for home at present time.

Hi i am an avid youtube fan and am currently looking for the best and most efficient home internet service interms of DOWNLOAD SPEED. My current isp’s highest download speed is 10-14kbps. very frustrating. i leave in south ‘c’. pleas advice…

When comparing speeds, remember the difference between ‘b’ and ‘B’ in the quoted speeds: b is bits, there are eight of these in a ‘B’ Byte. This often explains away the eightfold difference between expected and actual speed. Windows measures speeds in Bytes (or kiloBytes). By the way, what’s the fastest speed in Kenya, here in the UAE it is 24Mb/s 🙂 Wish I could afford it 🙂

hey everybody do you really know why the net is really slow, u see the company offering the net offers it at kilobits not kiloBytes that is why it is so slow a kilobite is quite slow in fact if u multiply 256kilobits by * 0.128 you will get exactly 35kilobytes per second speed so 24Mb/s is about 3 megabites per second. Youtube runs best at 1Mbps internet speeds about 128kilobytes per second so the best so far is either zuku africa online orange broadband nyumbani, safaricom or access kenya.

I have safaricom and it’s giving me problems. The main problem is that is cannot keep a sustained connection for long periods of time. When i am on the net, it will just disconnect without any warning. I’m planning on going to zuku but with after reading these posts, i’m not to sure any more. Any advice anyone?

this is all very interesting read. As the name suggests i know not too much about broadband and related sh.y.t however i am in the U.K and use broadband of about 2 to 8 Mbps. this is alright but substandard if you consider South East Asian countries have speeds of upto 100 Mbps. I cannot even begin to compare these speeds with a mere 128 Kbps offered in Kenya. I thought Kenya is now bringing in Fibre Optic technology or something like that!? [which as i understand is some fast fast sh.y.t! When will Kenya actually start benefiting from this?

Hi – The trouble in Kenya is lastmile! Last mile is the medium used to connect your modem/device to the ISP base station or distribution box. Copper from Telkom Kenya is good but limited and expensive to run. Wireless options in the form of Wimax, iBurst, 3G, 2,5G come in to bridge the gap. With 3G and above infrastructure, one can achieve 1mbps IF within towns where there is 905 and above network coverage.

Starts with your current and future needs. Consider other technologies if Wimax is not working for you. Safaricom 3g is good but alittle expensive. Considered setting up a Wifi network for instance at your home, then you add that and get a wifi access point.

I am in Canada and I run an online airtime transfer service to Kenya at mzabibi.com We chose to equip our 2 satelitte offices in Nairobi and Mombasa with Safaricom pay as you go USB sticks. We paid I think 4k for each stick and each month we use about 300MB which costs us about 1000/= per stick. The service has been great in that my reps can move to any part of the country that has Safaricom access and we are still be in touch. The only problems are the speeds are slow, the connections drop any time and there are times when you cannot log on at all. But overally it has really improved communication in our organization – we just avoid using MB guzzler sites like youtube and other graphics intensive sites. I would recommend Safaricom to anyone who wants low key cheap access.

i wanted to know..when will we really get the “broadband” broadband..the uber fast connection..i am with zuku right now,(paying 2500 a month for the premium package,though for that price you have to have their decoder)..,although i am truly happy with its speeds..i want more!!!,especially when it involves next generation gaming..yup big fan(18 years old bytheway)..and honestly with our speeds even connecting to the PSN,playstation network is a huge problem,..so just wanted to know WHEN,will we get those 1mb,2mb, fast speeds :(..please do let me know..anyone..

Hi there, the reason why u cannot connect or have problems in connecting to PSN is bcoz zuku does not offer dedicated broadband bandwidth and plus its not full duplex ie, the speed that u must be using is 256kbps and the upload must be 32 or 64kbps but u must have the same speeds as the uplink in order to get ur PSN working properly. so i guess u shud talk to zuku guys to increase ur uplink or have the isp changed. Thank You

I applied for Zuku Broad band in January , I have been calling them nearly every day for instalation, The customer service always say we will call you back which they never do. I have asked for my refund , but they will call me back when to collect it. very sad ????

Have been on Orange Broadband Nyumbani over a fixed ADSL connection for nearly two years, but am looking for other options now.

It took nearly a whole month of my time over the first six months getting it set up, including helping technicians physically identify the cables from my house at the chaotic signal boxes and exchanges! The service repeatedly failed over the first year, and service was awful. I’d often have to go and collect engineers from the Sports Rd exchange to get anything done. Even simply buying a top-up card at the incredibly slow Peponi Road store would often take half an hour.

Over the past year it has actually been better – more reliable connection, and recently very clear for Skype calls – clearer than calls to local fixed lines. I’ve noticed the helpline staff are more switched on. I think this reflects the involvement of Orange in moribund Telkom.

However the technicians are still useless. After a week of calling following a fault, with no explanation for umpteen broken appointments, and an expensive connection not working, I’m scratching my head about what option to change to. Luckily I have a phone I can tether for a connection in the meantime.

I have been using Access Kenya for over one year now. I started out on their â€œValue packageâ€ (64/64 by day and 128/256 by night). I was dissatisfied with the speed, so rather than doing the sensible thing and finding another provider, I subscribed to the higher speed â€œPremium packageâ€ supposedly 128/512 by night and weekends. The reality is I rearly see anything approaching 512kpbs on downloading. And recently, having â€œupgraded systemsâ€ the signal is constantly dropping.

I have been looking at alternatives for some time.

KDN have turned out to be a huge disappointment. They went on a promotion campaign before Christmas (dishing out misinformation at Nakumatt), and I expressed interest. Three months later an antenna was installed on my roof, supposedly to deliver 2mbps/2mpbs. Itâ€™s only 64/128kbps as I type. Not that bad of course, considering how far weâ€™ve come in such a short time, but when you sign up (and pay!) for 2mbps and get that, itâ€™s all rather deflating!

I was looking at Orange Broadband Nyumbani as yet another alternative. They offer 512kbps for Sh5000 incl VAT (while itâ€™s Sh6000 ex VAT with Access Kenya). Of course, comparing prices of services which donâ€™t actually deliver what they promise is pretty much a waste of time. The experience with Orange sounds very like the experience we had trying to maintain landlines with KPTC/Telkom Kenya before we were rescued from all of that by mobile phones!

I have an Africaonline (iBurst) gadget as well. While the speeds range between 512kpbs and 1mbps, and the connection is very stable, the problem with Africanonline/Infinet, of course, is the measly download limits (500mb for 1000/=). These arenâ€™t very realistic packages and prices, so until Africaonline can wise up to the fact that you canâ€™t offer broadband speeds and dial up download limits they really arenâ€™t worth considering for home â€œbroadbandâ€.

Zuku doesn’t work where I am, but if anything sounds too good to be true, well, it probably is!! Was quite an effort getting my money back when they realised there was no signal at my place.

Am using Access Kenya currently and am sorry to say the service is real poor, from customer handling all the way to the broadband service they offer today, before, it was good before but now i still don’t understand how they manage to have such a slow connection and internet failures up to 10 days! Am still shopping for a better service but soo far am still disappointed

Janet – Sorry for that kind of service. Now that you have been shoping around, say we give you a demo for 24 hours on a simple, fast, mobile and wireless solution that takes minutes to install? Drop me a line on [email protected]

Well, am using Internet Everywhere 3G+ by Orange. Its is perfect except that the modem cant stay on and keeps disconnecting every now and then with varying intervals (could be immediately after connection, after ten minutes, etc). I have complained to Telkom severally and seems they have no clue what the problem is. Its really frustrating! Otherwise, the speeds are perfect.

i have been using orange broadband plus for ksh. 5990 incl. vat flat rate. i get my connection thru an evdo wireless modem. though the service is widely available in many parts of the country, the speed varies quite tremendously. depending on where you are. in CBD, you will have it clocking you-tube real time while in estates with many orange fans the speed is nothing but terrible.

the other day we had a power blackout on a sunday morning. meaning, many people using pcs (incuding cybers) went down. using my laptop battery (befoer it also went down after 1.5 hrs) i was able to clock 2Mbps…frankly, i watched formula one live online.

Judging from the comments above it looks like orange broadband nyumbani is reliable but does its speeds support xbox live and PSN? Am also a massive downloader so if anyone knows better services please help.

looking at the speeds analysed here am thinking twice about coming back to Kenya in the next few months. I am so used to using 10-24 MB/s and when I look at the speeds my country offers its frustrating we have to be proud to be Kenyan. With fibre optic we hope everything will be al right. Seriously we have to upgrade our system a great deal, that is why we are slow in doing research because from the time one logs in to a search engine and the time it takes to open a single page, someone in Japan (or China) has simulated some hypothetical machine-robot. we shall be there one day once we have elite leaders in power.

ive kam to discover that orange has the best offer in the market but the problem is that their marketing staff are doing nothing to get the mass market but staff in particular is just superb he keeps his words by doing frequent check up on his clients problems he sold me a live box and he kams around to check wether i have any problem,if anyone needs a live box or any internet product email him on [email protected]â€”tkl.co.ke or call him on 0771515860

For those of whom think a 256kbps or 512kbps will reach that speed in download, you’ll be greatly disappointed, 256kbps actually means 256 kilobits per second, which means you divide it by eight which will give you 32kilobytes per second, 512kbps=64kilobytes per second. that’s the download speed you’ll get. So keep that in mind before you waste your money expecting to have such speeds.

[…] people are currently accessing the internet: if you have the money and the know how, you can get home broadband. If you just want a quick glimplse of things, that is, keeping in tabs with your Facebook account […]

for those not sure of the speed their modem provide use this link and this will help determine what you have http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ i hope it works in kenya.mobile broadband are not very fast,vodafone mobile gives you 1416kbps on this test.it would be interesting to see how safaricom and other kenyan providers do.

Hey guys if you in nairobi and its environs try tangerine there network is steady and quite fast and their price after the hassles with orange and safaricom modems,I took up tangerine wimax and its working very well.

I have used Zuku for 6 months and connection are not stable their customer service are not good either when you call then all phone are gone answered i resulted to African Online and am on Infinite Package the download are not good either and network is not that stable always too slow ….What i do i felt cheated by african online….

what is the best broadband service in umoja area in nairobi? Africa online was good but the service has become very poor(Availability is 3 days per week). Am thinking of safaricom but am not sure of the speeds. Any advice????

I use Orange (Telcom) Livebox in Karen. The speed is ok, people in service are nice but it has been out 2-4 days about four times over the last nine mths. I am told this is do to falling trees, thieves stealing the wire for copper, and one time it was lightning. I wish there was another comparable option so that we could have broadband wifi in our house.

i have used kdn for 4 months. The download speeds are amazing. I can clock between 400-600 kbps when dloading vidz off youtube or movies…. I pay bout 2300 a month. I think the only reason i clock this speed is that no one in my area uses the node that i connect to. Bt 3 months back, the system went down n they are not close to resolving it then bin laden being buddys with america…. The customer service is pathetic and they wil never give u a straight answer. I have to pay at the start of d month and i only used one day n the system crashed… They dont wanna refund my money and dnt evn knw when the system wil be back up…. Seriously, people in kenya think from their asses…. Thats y this country is going nowhere….

I would not recommend Zuku to anyone especially in the South Nairobi area (South B, South C, Industrial Area, etc). Their base station has been down last two months and the frustration on the technicians voice as he came to my property to attempt at fixing my network confirmed that Wananchi as a whole is an organization that is doomed. The customer service is appalling, when u visit their city centre branch your faced with receptionists too busy on facebook to be bothered to help you. when you do get their attention she would proceed to start flirting with the technicians with no regard of your problems. I have been so frustrated by their service I finally pulled the plug and resolved to a life of going to the cyber cafe. I cannot begin to describe how frustrated and angry these ppl have made me.